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This dissertation adopts the perspective of Cognitive Ethnography to examine the work of a grassroots, Navajo environmental organization called Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment. Specifically, I will examine the work and the challenges facing the members of this organization in order to evaluate how new communications and information technologies may be of use to them. This analysis begins, as Cognitive Ethnography mandates, with a general description of the tasks which constitute the work of Diné CARE. As will be discussed, these consist primarily in attempts to reassert what the organization's members consider to be traditional Navajo perspectives on economic development and the human relationship with the natural environment. Subsequently, I analyze the representations, measurements of work, and forms of organization required to accomplish Diné CARE's tasks. In all aspects of the work, members were constantly required to manage a dialogue between their preferred means of organizing or representing work, and the means required by the operating environment in which they found themselves, characterized primarily by relationships with various outside sources of legal, technical or financial support. The work of Diné CARE is thus extensively "dialogic." While members continually drew on Navajo traditions for viewing the relationship of human beings to the natural environment, for representing their work, and for building cooperative access to resources for resistance, they were nonetheless required at the same time to position these "traditional" approaches against approaches whose history of development have political, social and cultural roots in Western Europe and modem America. Often, this dialogue brought with it tension and even morally charged conflict for the members of Diné CARE. This tension extended to emerging technologies as well. In spite of many claims to the contrary, new communications and information technologies did little to alleviate the mismatch between "local" and "foreign" ways of doing work. Instead of "empowering" local communities by providing them access to information or the chance to be heard on their own terms, new technologies complicated the scenario of local resistance by requiring practices for representing work which were both difficult to master and often inappropriate.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Sociology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

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A fertility and family planning survey was conducted among the recipients of pub lie welfare ass i stance in San Juan County, Utah. Two hundred twenty-five recipient families out of some 536 families on the list were interviewed during May and June of 1968 by nine graduate and undergraduate students in Sociology and Social Work with the help of Social Welfare workers and Navajo interpreters. The study was primarily concerned with the following objectives: (1) to study the level and age patterns of fertility of a group of selected Navajo Indians, (2) to investigate the factors which might affect the fertility, desired fami.ly size, and ideal family size, (3) to study the knowledge of and the extent of the use of birth control methods among the selected group, (4) to compare the findings of previous fertility studies dealing with other groups to those found among the selected group of Navajos. The data indicate that the fertility of Navajo women was very high, reaching the completed fertility rate of 9. 2 children for women aged 45-49 years as compared with that of 2.4 children and 2 .8 children for white and non-white women in the United States in 1960 respectively. The number of children ever born among the total ever married women was 6 .6 children . The number of children the Navajo women considered ideal for a couple in general and for the Navajo family in particular was 7 . 1 children and 7.7 children respectively. A strong inverse relationship was observed among Navajo women between fertility level and several social variables. The fertility of women who knew English was as much as 3.9 percent below that of women who did not . Fertility was also lower among those who had more frequent contact with white people. Although the proportion of women who knew any methods of birth control was very low (only 50 percent of the total women), the fertility of these women was considerably lower than that of those who did not know anything about birth control.

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree and type of participation of selected Navajo educators. A questionnaire was developed for this study to allow categorization of the participant's responses of frequencies of participation at specific administrative levels and institutional functions. Selected elementary and secondary schools were visited by appointment and thirty-two participants volunteered for this study. A diversity of Navajo educators was represented, according to background information obtained. Participants included both males and females, ages twenty-one to sixty, one to sixteen years of teaching experience, on-campus and on-site degree program graduates, public and B.I.A. school systems, six individual schools, and administrators and teachers. Overall, the greatest frequency of participation was as follows: For the Policy and Planning and Coordinating and Developing levels, student services (assessment and counselling) and curricular activities were highest, respectively. Daily teaching and administering duties were highest, as would be expected, at the Supervising and Implementing level with curriculum development and student counselling and assessment next highest, respectively. Considering background characteristics, a public school district, an individual public school, males, the thirty to thirty-nine age group, on-campus program graduates, those with six years of teaching experience total or within a school district each reported the highest frequency of participation when compared within categories, respectively. Based on the overall mean of frequencies reported, high or low values were assigned. When the chi square statistic was employed, three significant relationships were found within background groups: those with Master's degrees; those with six to sixteen years of teaching; those with five to twelve years in a school; and those from one university had significantly higher frequencies. This study was exploratory in nature; and it is not known to what degree the conclusions could be extended to the general population of Navajo educators. The Navajo educators studied did participate to some degree at all levels in all school functions. Certain groups reported more participation, and those with Bachelor's degrees, fewer than six years of teaching experience, and fewer than five years in a school reported significantly lower frequencies of participation.

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